There’s something unsettling about a sealed room, especially one hidden inside a home. In 1976, a phone call to the National Museum of Ireland reported the discovery of a “cave” during construction work outside Wicklow Town. Dr Joseph Raftery, Keeper of Irish Antiquities, sent young archaeologist Eamonn Kelly t to investigate, on what would turn out to be his first ever fieldwork assignment. The report was misleading: it wasn’t a cave, or even a souterrain, but a sealed-up brick oven connected to a fireplace in Coolbeg House. The structure had been blocked off in the early twentieth century.

Inside that bricked-up oven was a strange and silent cache.

SOURCES:

• https://daily.jstor.org/is-there-a-witch-bottle-in-your-house/
• TRAPPING WITCHES IN WICKLOW Eamonn P. KellyArchaeology Ireland, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Autumn 2012), pp. 16-18 (3 pages)
• An American Witch Bottle M.J. Becker Archaeology, Vol. 33, No. 2 (March/April 1980), pp. 18-23 (6 pages)
• https://blackthornandstone.com/2020/09/02/witch-bottles-hidden-curses-objects-of-protection-objects-of-vengeance/
• The Material Culture of Ritual Concealments in the United StatesM. Chris Manning Historical Archaeology, Vol. 48, No. 3, MANIFESTATIONS OF MAGIC: THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND MATERIAL CULTURE OF FOLK RELIGION (2014), pp. 52-83 (32 pages)
• https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/good-and-evil-witch-bottles-countermagical-devices-through-history-006649
• https://mysticaltimesblog.com/the-dymock-curse-gloucestershire/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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